On college campuses, the Constitution should be the only free speech zone

Student Kevin Shaw, 27, hands out copies of the U.S. Constitution and aims to recruit members for Young Americans for Liberty at Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

America’s colleges should be bastions of free speech, places where ideas can be freely expressed, exchanged and debated. On too many college campuses, this expectation is thwarted, with free speech often restricted by arbitrary administrative regulations.

One local example is the case of Pierce College student Kevin Shaw, who dared to distribute copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus. On Nov. 2, 2016, Shaw and other student members of Young Americans for Liberty were approached by a school representative who told Shaw that he was in violation of the college’s “free speech” policy and wasn’t allowed to continue distributing the U.S. Constitution outside of the designated “free speech “area on campus.

Under the peculiar rules of Pierce College, students wishing to exercise their First Amendment rights must apply for a free speech permit and stay within a 616-square-foot area of the 426-acre campus.

Fortunately, Shaw, with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District in March, arguing that Pierce College violated his civil rights and requesting that the court strike down rules limiting free speech at Pierce and other district colleges.

Late last month, the lawsuit received notable support from the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a brief in support of Shaw’s lawsuit, arguing that Pierce College’s policies unconstitutionally restrain free speech.

The move came a month after Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a Sept. 26 speech at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, strongly condemned encroachments on free speech on campuses.

“Freedom of thought and speech on the American campus are under attack,” he said, invoking the 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines, in which the court warned: “Freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right could be exercised only in an area that a benevolent government has provided as a safe haven.”

That is unfortunately what has become of free speech on college campuses across the country, even if college officials can’t see it themselves, which LACCD officials clearly can’t. “We are fully committed to free expression on our campuses,” district spokesman Yusef Robb recently told the Los Angeles Daily News. “As a community college district, promoting the free exchange of ideas and knowledge is at the core of what we do, every day.”

Evidently, the LACCD’s idea of promoting the free exchange of ideas is to confine free speech to the point where college policy invites a lawsuit. To that end, they have succeeded.

Shaw’s lawsuit has gained further support from a long-time district donor. For decades, The Dennis and Anne Beaver Foundation has sponsored student educational trips to France, but Shaw’s case has given attorney Dennis Beaver pause. “We are not going to support an organization that fragrantly denies students their rights under the First Amendment,” Beaver said. “We are putting everything on hold.”

It is time for Pierce and other colleges across the country to stop interfering with the free speech rights of students. Restricting speech to designated zones is fundamentally at odds with the rights to free expression, rights which colleges should be fostering and facilitating, not suppressing.